This invention pertains to the construction of an outdoor unit for an electric heat pump of a size and character typically useable for residential conditioning.
The construction arrangement of this invention arose from a project to provide an electric heat pump particularly adapted for use in Northern climates, and one in which higher efficiencies are obtained in the heating mode of the unit. Since higher heating efficiencies are available with the refrigerant compressor placed indoors, as is known in the art, the compressor is omitted from the outdoor unit which permits various objectives of the outdoor unit to be more easily obtained. As such, the outdoor unit of this invention is of a construction which is considered to most nearly satisfy the combined requirements of performance, manufacturability, maintainability and, of course, marketability. These objectives are obtained with the unit of the invention through the provision of various features which will be explained in some detail hereinafter.